


is it alright

by destiny919, MagicalSpaceDragon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Operation Kuron, just a little bit, katt if you squint, past sheith if you squint, we're all squinting like pre-kerberos matt without his glasses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 01:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12594932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destiny919/pseuds/destiny919, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalSpaceDragon/pseuds/MagicalSpaceDragon
Summary: Matt notices this, because Matt is a good goddamn friend who cares about Keith as an individual and not just an extension of Shiro, and pulls him into a tight hug. "Missed you, buddy," he says. Keith chokes on a sob and grabs him in return.





	is it alright

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic we wrote mid-s4 that obviously became canon divergent - more Katt friendship and salt. Yes, we've written fics like this before, and we will write more fics like this after. We already have a canon-compliant one in the works, and if you want more Matt Holt being angry about the way Keith's been treated by his team, check out our ongoing fic [Collapsing Star.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12511748) The next chapter is coming VERY soon!
> 
> Important note for anyone who hasn't read our previous fics: "Bambi" is our headcanon nickname Matt has for Keith- he told Pidge all about his friend Bambi at the Garrison without ever mentioning his real name is Keith.

"Look alive, Bambi," Matt says, pouncing on Keith suddenly and ruffling his hair. Keith whirls around and gapes at him.

"Bambi?" Lance says incredulously, obviously ready to laugh. 

"Yeah! Haven't you noticed those big shiny eyes!" Matt gestures to Keith's admittedly large and shiny eyes, which are even shinier than usual because he's actually on the verge of tears.

Matt notices this, because Matt is a good goddamn friend who cares about Keith as an individual and not just an extension of Shiro, and pulls him into a tight hug. "Missed you, buddy," he says. Keith chokes on a sob and grabs him in return. 

"Hold up," says Pidge.  _ "Keith _ is  _ Bambi?" _

"Oh yeah," Matt says with wonder, pulling away from the hug. "You heard a lot about ol' Bambers, didn't you." Keith gives him a look that's halfway between incredibly touched and dawning horror. 

"Uh,  _ yeah! _ " Pidge snorts, and Lance and Hunk both lean in.

"Tell us  _ everything." _

"Tell them  _ nothing _ ," Keith orders. God knows what Matt might have told Pidge about their time at the Garrison, and no matter how much he protests, Lance will latch onto the most embarrassing things forever. And Keith just can't live with that. 

"So this one time when he was trying to sneak into the simulator-" Matt starts, and Keith slaps a hand over his mouth.

" _ Traitor!" _

" _ The truth will never be silenced! _ " Matt declares, muffled.

"Maybe not the truth, but  _ you _ will be!" Keith threatens. "Try biting my hand all you want, I'm wearing armor!" 

"What the quiznak," Lance says as they continue their dramatic struggle.

"Yeah, this is pretty much what I heard about them," Pidge says.

The doors open, and Shiro walks in.

"Keith," he says, not really a greeting. "What happened on the mission? Did you get the intel on Lotor's quintessence?"

"Yeah, not as much as we were hoping for, but-" Keith starts.

"Why didn't you get all of it?" Shiro cuts him off. "What did you do wrong?"

Keith blinks at him. "Um, that wasn't really it, there just wasn't..."

Shiro keeps firing more accusatory questions at him, demanding details even as he hardly lets Keith speak, and Matt is looking between the two of them with increasing incredulity. He cannot fucking believe what he is witnessing right now. Keith has just gotten back after being on an undercover mission for months, and yet Shiro is just grilling him about mission details? He takes a closer look at Keith, and his eyes widen. 

Keith isn't meeting his eyes, or Shiro's, or anyone else's. He's totally clammed up, after having been obviously overjoyed upon seeing Matt again. He's looking at the ground, shoulders hunched. And Shiro is just continuing on. 

With some creative head-angling, Matt manages to aggressively catch Keith's eye. He raises his eyebrows and glances over at Shiro. Keith's mouth thins and he looks down again, and that's all Matt needs to know. He steps in front of Keith and levels his other friend with a Look. 

"Shiro," he says, "he just got back. Let him relax for a little first."

Shiro frowns at him and it's wrong, wrong, wrong. "This is important, Matt," he says. "Keith spent months getting this intel."

"Yeah, and he'll be better at giving it to us after he's at least sat down first! You know that about him!" Matt narrows his eyes. "Don't you?"

"Of-of course." Shiro's frown deepens. "But this is the fate of the universe we're deciding here. That can't depend on Keith's comfort."

"Since  _ when?" _ Matt says incredulously. "You used to think the world was ending when the fucking Garrison cafeteria didn't have Keith's favorite brownies and he'd get that sad face and his giant eyes would kill us both!"

"What," says Lance. 

Shiro's jaw flexes a little and he stands taller. Matt isn't intimidated even slightly. "The fate of the universe  _ literally _ depends on this, Matt."

"I'm fucking aware, thanks! And I also know that no one taking Keith's feelings into account is why he left in the first place!"

"Um," Keith says. "Who...told you that?"

"Nobody," Matt snaps. "They didn't have to! I heard what had been going on and put the damn pieces together. I'm a genius, remember? And I, unlike everyone else here, actually know you! It wasn't that hard."

"Is that true, Keith?" Hunk asks worriedly. Keith shrinks back from the question. 

"I- no, no, the mission was really important and the Blade needed me. Voltron didn't."

Matt scowls. Of course Keith wasn't going to open up and tell the truth to these people. None of them actually knew him, because they hadn't  _ tried _ . At the Garrison, Matt had met Keith because Shiro introduced them, and he became Keith's friend and got to know him by just...talking to him and paying attention. It wasn't that hard! Keith was prickly outside, yeah, but it was in a way that reminded Matt of his sister, a combination of caution and a singleminded determination that Matt envied sometimes. And once they got talking about the programming changes Matt wanted to make to the flight simulators, well, things just snowballed.  _ It wasn't that hard _ . Other people-  _ these _ people- just hadn't bothered.

Shiro had. Shiro had more than bothered. Except something had apparently changed. There's a lot about the behavior of the "Black Paladin" that Matt has been side-eyeing since Pidge found him, but he was willing to mostly write that off as Shiro having been changed by his time in captivity. Anyone would have come out a little worse for wear. But this? If Shiro is acting like this, and Keith is looking at him- at  _ Shiro!- _ like  _ that, _ then he really isn't the guy Matt knows anymore. 

But it's obvious that Keith still is. 

"Come on," Matt says, and claps a  _ gentle _ , friendly hand on Keith's shoulder. "I'll show you my room on the Castle. You will not  _ believe _ how I've tricked out the sound system in there, Pidge is still trying to figure out what I did-"

He leads Keith away from the rest of them and it's miserable how easily, how gladly he goes. Matt shoots Pidge, who's watching them with a guilty expression, a meaningful look.  _ We are talking about this later. _

Pidge bows her head a little bit.  _ I know.  _

"I didn't know our rooms had sound systems," Keith says once they're out of earshot. 

"They don't," Matt says. "I built it from scratch and pirated all this terrible classical music from Earth's radio transmissions. You'd think they'd want aliens to hear Stairway to Heaven or Single Ladies, but no."

"Speaking as an alien, I don't really want to hear Single Ladies," Keith says, humor bone-dry as it ever was. 

"Yeah, dude!" Matt hops around in front of him. "What is up with  _ that!  _ Like, you good with that and everything?"

Keith shrugs. "I mean. I accepted it a while ago. Things were rough with Allura, but nobody else gave me a hard time."

"I asked about  _ you _ , Bambi."

He scrunches into himself a little, arms crossing across his chest. "I don't really want to talk about this."

"Okay. That's fair." Matt frowns. "You and the Princess smoothed things over, right?"

"Completely," Keith assures him. "Allura's great."

"Good." It would suck if he had to yell at her and ruin any slim chance he actually had. "So, where's your room?"

Keith shrugs. "I dunno. Somebody else has probably taken it over while I was gone."

_ "What?" _ Matt stares at him. "You were gone for a few  _ months _ , not forever!"

He only shrugs again. "I left Team Voltron. They had no reason to keep it."

Ohhhhhhh, Matt is going to have to rip  _ somebody _ a new one. Possibly several somebodies. "Well, worst case scenario, you can bunk with me."

Keith quirks a little smile at him. "Thanks. But I don't know how long I'll be sticking around now. They still don't need me."

Matt snorts. "They don't need me, either."

"You're Pidge's brother."

"And you're  _ my _ friend, even if you don't seem to be anybody else's! What the fuck is up with that, by the way?"

"I don't know." Keith wraps his arms around himself. "I'm-" He looks uneasily around at the hallway they've stopped in. 

"Come on." Matt grabs him by the arm and tugs him gently to the left. "Let's go to my room. I'll put on some of that staticky Beethoven." 

Keith rolls his eyes. "Please don't."

"Nope, too late, I've got like thirteen hours, we can put it on loop-" Keith elbows him and Matt grins. "Fine, fine, I'll get you back for all that emo music you made me listen to some other time. Pidge had some of those songs on her phone, by the way, we could listen to them instead."

"Maybe later," Keith says, and he's got that look on his face that he had a lot back in the beginning at the Garrison, like he doesn't quite know what to make of someone caring about him.

Matt just nudges him in the side. "Works for me," he says. "We can just...catch up on things. Y'know, I had a wild year, doing spy shit for the rebels and tracking Galra intel!" He's about to mention how Keith had actually been part of  _ Voltron _ , but he has a feeling that isn't something he wants to talk about either. But the  _ reason _ for that is something they are  _ definitely _ talking about.  Maybe after he's cleared some things up with Pidge.

"Yeah, spy shit is… pretty crazy," Keith says unenthusiastically, and Matt wants to pull his hair out. Have things been bad with the Blade of Marmora, too?

They stop in front of Matt's room. "Well," he says, a little helplessly, "here's my door. I don't have a 'no girls allowed' sign up because Pidge would probably get annoyed and vandalize it somehow, or rig up that sound system to only play Rick Astley- I don't know where she'd get the audio in space, but  _ somehow-" _

"She would," Keith agrees. "So, am I gonna get the full tour?"

Matt snorts. "Oh yeah, we've got the works in here, try not to get lost."

"Wow," Keith deadpans. "Do you have like, a bed?"

"Fuck, dude, I sure do. And a lamp-"

"-And a desk, and a chair?"

"And a  _ closet!" _ They grin at each other, and something in Matt's chest loosens a little bit. So Keith hasn't been  _ completely  _ beaten down by whatever the fuck's happened. 

There's a little more than that in the room- he's already accumulating a pile of tech he's working on, mostly leftovers from the sound system. His major projects are in Pidge's lab, which has rapidly become both of theirs- and Hunk's. The chemistry section of it is  _ all _ Hunk's. (Pidge says he's a stress baker. Matt is appropriately intimidated.) He's also got a few things he brought from the base when he left with Pidge- information he couldn't leave behind, equipment he figured he'd need. Nothing he would consider personal effects.

"Okay, so," he says, picking up one of his speakers, "I didn't want to hook it up to the intercom because that's kind of an unnecessary strain on the tech and Pidge has been telling me the Castle's pretty old, so-"

"Matt," Keith says, tired but fond. Right, the speaker thing was an excuse.

"Right!" He whirls back around and puts his hands on his hips all dramatically. "Alright, Bambi, take a load off." Matt goes and plops down on his bed while Keith, as expected, hovers awkwardly in the middle of the room. He pats the spot next to him and Keith makes a beeline for it, even though he sits down rather gingerly. "Okay, so what the fuck is up with everything," Matt says, cutting right to the goddamn chase. Because that is the best way to deal with shit with Keith, as he well learned. 

"I assume you don't mean that in the 'how are ya doin' kind of way," Keith says wryly. 

"While I would like to know that too, no, I don't." Matt raises his eyebrows. "What happened to Shiro, Keith?"

Keith opens his mouth for just a moment, and then abruptly closes it and hangs his head so far his chin is practically touching his sternum. "I don't know," he rasps. "It's- he wasn't like this when I found him the first time. And then, the second- things seemed okay, but then. But then he."

_ You lost Shiro a _ second  _ time?  _ Matt wants to ask, but refrains. A less pressing conversation for another time. "He turned into that?" Whatever the hell that is, which is to say,  _ not the Shiro he knew.  _

"Yeah," Keith confirms miserably. "I don't know what happened. But he's- it's- with me, he's not-"

"He's not an adoring golden retriever?" Matt suggests. Keith hunches in on himself a little. Okay, levity, a bad idea. Matt sighs. "That's… that was a bad way of putting it. Sorry."

"It's like..." Keith rubs a hand over his eyes. "It's like he doesn't care about anything except the mission. Everything is about Voltron, nothing is about  _ us.  _ Any of us. It was like that for a while before I left."

"But it wasn't at first?" Matt prompts gently. 

"No." Keith shakes his head. "He was our leader, he was pretty messed up after being held by the Galra, but he...he was still Shiro."

"In a way that he really, really isn't now." Matt frowns. "I had been thinking that his attitude was just from when he was held by the Galra. But if it's not..."

"Things have been weird since we got him back. The Black Lion didn't accept him at first. I spent months trying to convince him to give it another shot, and he said no every time. But then he finally did, and..."

"He only tried once?" Matt says incredulously. "But Pidge told me Shiro spent ages trying to bond with Black! He used to sit in there for hours with her, she says."

"He did. I don't...I don't know why he was so reluctant...I thought maybe it was because he really wanted it for  _ me _ \- he'd been insisting for a while before he was gone the second time that he wanted me to lead Voltron if anything happened to him. And then, I didn't  _ want _ to- God, I didn't want to- but I did. And yeah, I did a shitty job like everyone but him thought I would. But when he got back I thought he still believed in me, and then when he didn't want to try again with Black...but with everything else, it was like. He didn't trust me or listen to me anymore. He didn't  _ care _ , Matt." Keith buries his face in hands, hunching over again after that rush of words. "And obviously he still doesn't."

"And when you said you were going on a  _ deep cover  mission _ _,_ for months, he just...let you go?" Matt asks, delicately as possible, which is not very. 

Keith nods without looking up. "Didn't even try to get me to stay."

Matt lets a breath out and leans back, trying to process everything. "He talked about you all the time, you know that? At the Garrison, and all the way to Kerberos. The way he's acting now, it's like… do I even  _ know _ this guy?"

They both sit there in miserable silence for a long moment, and then Matt sits bolt upright.

"Wait a fucking second.  _ Do _ I even know this guy?"

Keith looks up, bewildered. "What are you talking about?"   
  
He takes Keith by the shoulders urgently. "Keith, you said he started acting like this after you found him the second time? Are you  _ absolutely positive?" _   


Keith just blinks at him. "Yes. I'm sure."   


_ "Where was he before you found him?" _

Keith's eyes widen. "He was... on a Galra ship. He told me they were- they were  _ experimenting on him." _

"Oh my god," Matt says. "What if that's  _ not Shiro _ . If whatever the hell happened in a year with the Galra couldn't make him stop acting like Shiro, then a few more months wouldn't do it either. What if they did something to his head or they bodysnatched him or-"

Keith grabs Matt's hands, still squeezing his shoulders. "Do you hear yourself? That's insane!"

"You  _ know _ what kind of technology the Galra have access to," he says, on the edge of panic. "It only takes 72 hours to brainwash a human with  _ just _ Earth resources, Keith, they could have done something- hell, cloning! Cloning is  _ easy! _ If they had a way to make him act like Shiro-"

"This is  _ insane," _ Keith repeats, looking desperate. "If he's not Shiro, then- then  _ where-" _

"I don't  _ know," _ Matt says. He knows he's gripping Keith's shoulders too hard, but he can't- "I don't even know if anything I'm saying is-"

Keith grabs onto him in return, just as tightly. He's clinging, to Matt's presence and to the hope he's offering. "He feels  _ wrong. _ I thought it was all in my head but something feels _ wrong."  _

"It's not all in your head," Matt confirms, voice a little strangled. "Not by a long shot. What are we going to  _ do?" _

"About this?" Keith seems to steel himself. He sits up a little straighter and his grip on Matt marginally relaxes. "I don't know. But I'll tell you what we  _ are _ going to do."

"Yeah?"

Keith's eyes are blazing. "We're going to find the  _ real _ Shiro." 

**Author's Note:**

> Did You Know: In the Girl Genius fandom, "you can bunk with me" is synonymous with "I have a lot of repressed gay feelings about you".
> 
> come find [destiny](http://tarvek-sturmvoraus.tumblr.com/) and [space](http://magicalspacedragon.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


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